I gave up on the hard NYRs. I aim low...I vow not to violently kill anyone (that one's hard but so far so good), I promise not to gain so much weight that a muumuu would be tight, I will not take my neighbor's wife in vain (I like to add something religion in there, just in case), etc;

I was trying to parse his list to determine an exact date (America was not at war and Woody was a pacifist in Jan. 1941) He divorced his first wife in 1943 ("Send Mary and kids money"), he had joined the Merchant Marine (42-44) to avoid the draft("Help win war -- beat fascism"), but then a simple Google search came up with the answer: January, 1942

Our Statement of Principle

“And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlessly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."-- Nick Tosches